So Airbus managed to overtake Boeing on gross orders, with an extraordinary 1,458 aircraft, but fell short with its net total of 1,341 – a result which Airbus sales supremo John Leahy described as a “diplomatic solution” when the airframer unveiled its much-anticipated 2007 figures in Toulouse last week.
Fair enough. But neither number matches the enigmatic ‘1,427’ which was said to have been spotted on a banner being readied for display at the Airbus Training Centre in Miami once the manufacturer had declared its hand to the world’s media. So what gives?
Enter a spokesman for the centre…who, it turns out, is just as baffled about the whole affair. “You’re the second person to ask me about this,” he says in bewilderment, explaining that he’s already denied all knowledge to a former member of the company’s North American communications team.
“There really is no such thing,” he says of the alleged banner, adding that he has no idea how the story evolved (although that’s easy – it started here, and was also picked up here).
“We didn’t know the numbers until we read about them in the press. We certainly didn’t have them beforehand,” he adds. “We’d have had our scalps taken if we’d put out a banner. We’d have been shot.”
Besides, he adds, the Miami centre simply handles the crew training and simulation side and doesn’t immerse itself in the annual orders scrap.
So there you go. If the banner ever existed, it’s vanished without trace. But then, since Miami is supposedly one of the three corners making up the Bermuda Triangle, unexplained disappearances are pretty much par for the course.
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